Claire McCaskill Responds to Planned Parenthood Defunding Request

The other day I wrote to Claire McCaskill, among others, reporting the illegal activity of Planned Parenthood in counseling a 14 year old girl to lie to obtain an abortion. My full email is included in that post. Here is her response:

Thank you for contacting me regarding my position on abortion. I appreciate hearing from you, and I welcome the chance to respond.

Abortion should be safe, legal and rare. As your U.S. Senator, I am committed to ensuring that women, especially those victimized by sexual assault or experiencing severe medical complications, have a right to emergency contraception and safe abortions if they so choose. That said, I support placing certain restrictions on partial birth abortion and requiring parental consent for minors under the age of 15.

Instead of criminalizing women and their doctors, we must focus on reducing abortions. I am a strong supporter of the Prevention First Act (S.21). This legislation seeks to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions by expanding family planning education programs and increasing access to emergency contraception. The bill would also help improve women’s access to preventative health care services.

Again, I appreciate you taking the time to share your views with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future regarding other matters of interest or concern to you.

All best,
Senator Claire McCaskill

Of course, like a good politician, McCaskill totally avoids the issue. It is not enough for us to just write once. If we are not satisfied with the answer we get for our elected officials we need to press in and continue. Here is my response to her.

Dear Senator McCaskill:

Thank you for my prompt response to my inquiry. However, it did not even address my question. I specifically asked you to defund the Planned Parenthood in Memphis for its illegal activity in counseling a 14 year old girl to break Tennessee law in order to obtain an abortion. Here is the video I sent you evidencing their activity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMlrAj4v4J4

Now to address the points you did bring up in your email.

First I applaud you for supporting placing certain restrictions on partial birth abortion and requiring parental consent for minors under the age of 15. I would like to see you pushing these matters through the Senate. Will you lead on these issues that you state you are committed to?

If your concerns are primarily for victims of rape and those with serious medical conditions will you support making abortion illegal in all other instances? Though I personally do not agree with those exceptions, I would agree with that political solution. Will you?

The rest of your email I do not find quite accurate. You are not committed to make abortion safe, legal and rare. You are committed to making pregnancy safe, legal and rare. Only your plan is very faulty. You do it by teaching kids that can have sex without restraint. That is a recipe for disaster for both pregnancy and STDs. Your theory simply does not work.

I also disagree with your characterization that pro-life people are interested in criminalizing women. That simply is not true. It is a pro-abortion talking point that has no basis in reality and I ask you, as a Senator of the United States, to quite disseminating specifically false information.

Very Truly Yours

Guys we need to hold our leaders accountable. Follow up, follow up, follow up. Do not let them get away with not responding to you. You are entitled to a specific answer.

I found this point interesting. When I replied to Senator McCaskill’s email my reply bounced back and I had to go back to her website to resubmit my response.

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